Huntington Ingalls Gets $2.6B Navy Contract

NEWPORT NEWS, Va. -- Huntington Ingalls Industries ( HII) said Friday that it has won a $2.6 billion contract to refuel and overhaul the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, a 25-year-old nuclear-powered Naval aircraft carrier.

The company said the ship arrived at its Newport News Shipbuilding division Thursday. Work began immediately and will be complete in November 2016. Huntington Ingalls will refuel the ship's reactors and modernize more than 2,300 compartments, 600 tanks, and hundreds of systems. It also will upgrade the flight deck, catapults, combat systems and the "island," the ship's command center for flight deck operations.

Huntington Ingalls said the price includes costs of the work as well as incentive fees.

The refueling and overhaul was scheduled to start in February, but it was delayed because of concerns about funding and the defense budget. Last week both houses of Congress passed a continuing resolution that will keep the government funded through September 30, the end of its current fiscal year. President Obama signed the stopgap funding measure on Tuesday. Huntington Ingalls said the law allowed the Navy and its shipbuilding division to move ahead with the work.

The Abraham Lincoln was built by Huntington Ingalls' Newport News Shipbuilding unit and launched in February 1988. Huntington Ingalls is the largest military shipbuilder in the U.S., and the company is the biggest industrial employer in Virginia. Newport News Shipbuilding is the nation's only builder of aircraft carriers and one of two submarine builders.

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